


745 Down

by Salty_Boi



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Lots of referenced Injuries, Not Canon Compliant, Shifter AU, kinda gory, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:29:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24135880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salty_Boi/pseuds/Salty_Boi
Summary: Tony Stark was a Bombay cat shifter like his mother. A miniature panther lookalike with striking Amber eyes and the sleekest coat you've ever seen. A low-level shifter at best, especially considering how small his shifted form was. Or, That's what his paperwork said at least.And maybe that's what he was, once.
Relationships: None bc it's just a drabble I thought up
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	745 Down

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all this is just a drabble-y bit that's kinda but not really part of a larger storyline. I might continue it, might not, I wrote it a while ago.
> 
> Also I'm posting this off my phone bc i dont have a computer so I apologise if it looks weird 
> 
> But yeah, enjoy :)

Nobody's POV

Approximately no one was surprised when the Avengers pulled together into a pack after a year of living together. They had fought numerous battles over that time, so realistically, they had to trust each other with their lives, or they wouldn’t be able to function as a team. What surprised them was just how close they would become. Granted, it took time, effort, and quite a few spats, but by the end of their first year, the only person who had yet to start walking around the tower in their animal form was Tony. 

Naturally, when they first moved in, the team had collectively assumed that Tony was reluctant to shift around them due to being the only Tier One shifter on the team, as well as being unfamiliar with them. They had done the same, after all. 

But they all realized quickly that he didn’t act like the Tier One shifter he was; they generally preferred to back off during arguments, playing mediator- unlike Tony, who would start arguments left and right, often without so much as realizing that he was doing it, but carry through with them nonetheless. The man refused to back down when he knew something was right or wrong. Not that he’d let you tell him, but the genius was even more stubborn than Steve sometimes. Which was saying a lot.

The team eventually brushed off Tony’s refusal to shift, accepting that it was simply the way the billionaire was. He had numerous other quirks, so it was just added to the list of “Weird Things Tony Does”, right next to ‘Stays in the lab for days on end for inventing binges, then comes out only for coffee and sometimes sleep if we’re lucky’. 

Only after they realized they had become a pack did they start actively trying to make Tony comfortable enough around them to shift, trying to get him to join the pack. He was a part of the team, it made sense. A month into their endeavor, they enlisted Rhodey and Pepper’s help, only to discover that Tony hadn’t shifted around them either. Ever.

And if that wasn’t disconcerting, then nothing was. Tony’s refusal was downright dangerous; It wasn’t good for anyone to never shift- it could cause some serious mental and physical issues the longer you went without shifting. They tried to talk with Tony about it, but the genius had an impossible skill with controlling conversations that he used liberally. 

Not even Natasha or Bucky could make him discuss his Anima, and they both were trained to convince people to divulge information they didn’t want to share. 

The team at large had only caught a few glimpses of his anima throughout the year and a half of knowing him; flashes of violently burning amber eyes when he was stressed or angry enough, hints of fangs in similar situations, or after one of his week-long absences to undisclosed locations all over the world. but nothing beyond that. 

Until, of course, Hydra made their move. 

The terrorist organization orchestrated the perfect setup. They waited until Thor was off-world, and set their scheme into motion. Everyone was pulled to different corners of the world to best utilize their talents for missions, then sent a team to the Avengers’ Tower to pluck tony from the building- everyone else completely unaware until it was too late.

The first person to return to the tower was Bruce- who came back to a shut-down JARVIS and utterly wrecked common floor. The security footage was gone; replaced by the Hydra emblem, and the confusing, alarming audio of a fifteen-minute fight that left the common floor in shambles. He’d called Fury in minutes telling him to call back the others from their missions.

\---------------------  
Tony’s POV

Realistically, he’d always known that something like this would happen sooner or later. Tony already knew that Hydra would come to collect what was theirs eventually, he had simply been foolish enough to let his guard down for a second. He got comfortable, and now he was paying for it. 

So here he was, tied up in the back right corner of an all too familiar reinforced concrete box, sitting in a scrap of canvas they called a cot, waiting for the door to open so he could make some sort of move to escape or figure out why Hydra had made their move now. He could feel the contradicting instincts battling in the back of his head, torn three ways between hiding, waiting to see where this would go, or fighting his way out again- he remembered the layout of the facility vividly from his many years spent in the halls during his younger years. 

The genius was already partially shifted, being in the base alone was enough to set him off, but that added to the fact that his team was currently scattered all over the world- most likely clueless of his predicament, or, worse, in similar situations- made him want to scream and tear his hair out. 

But he couldn’t let the people that were sure to be watching him know just how affected he was by being in the building- partially shifting without even realizing it was bad enough. So, he sat as still as he could, trying to formulate a plan while he waited for someone to come get him. 

\---------------------------  
Natasha’s POV

The debrief room was well beyond tense, and it looked like Bruce was having a difficult time not hulking out because of it. You could've heard a butterfly land on the carpet it was so silent, so when the door abruptly slammed open without preamble, everyone jumped- Natasha instinctively pulling a gun. 

Fury was living up to his namesake like Natasha had never seen before. The man stalked into the room- clearly on the warpath- face twisted in a permanent grimace as he smacked a single, thin file on the table, the quiet fwap completely out of place in the stiff atmosphere. 

It was Natasha who reached for the file first, picking it up carefully. Reading the only sheet of paper in the file, she glanced back up at Fury dubiously before handing it off to Bucky, who reacted similarly. “What does Anima have to do with this? It’s supposed to be dead.” 

Natasha didn’t miss how he’d gone completely stiff- as had everyone else except Steve. 

Fury sighed heavily, pulling a video up on the screen. “Apparently, it’s not. Remember The audio from the Tower’s break in? About ten minutes in, we hear this.” he hit play on the video, and almost immediately, a feral growl tore from the speakers, followed by a furious roar, and a series of screams and crashes. He paused it again after, switching to a video of Times Square. “Our systems matches the frequency with this.” The video showed a perfectly normal shot of times square, until, out of nowhere, one of the people in the middle shifted, then There was a Massive animal in the center, attacking anyone and everyone near it, and roaring ferociously. 

Natasha glanced at Steve, who had gone pale. “What is that?” 

Fury barely glanced at him. “That's the problem. We didn’t know 30 years ago, and we still don’t know now. We think it’s one of Hydra’s experiments, but there’s no way to tell. It would show up out of nowhere, kill a bunch of people, then disappear without a trace. We thought it was someone’s Anima- but the people who had seen it said that it wasn’t possible. Then It disappeared for over 20 years. Until now, apparently.” He typed something into the holoscreen in front of him and pulled up a video. Natasha had a feeling she knew where this was going. 

The video was obviously surveillance, and showed six agents escorting a somewhat short, dark-haired man down a hallway. the man was walking much too easily for someone who had six guns trained on him. He had a long thin tail, a set of black ears atop his head, and a pair of antler-like horns protruding from his hairline. The room was dead silent as he allowed himself to be shoved roughly through a door. The tension around the table grew and grew for the five minutes that nothing changed. 

It snapped when a ferocious snarl tore out of the speakers, followed quickly by a blood-curdling scream that cut off all too tellingly with a gurgling noise. The guards began yelling into their radios as Something slammed against the door repeatedly until the steel barrier was torn clear off its hinges and thrown across the hallway. 

Immediately after, a massive four legged creature came flying hurtling through the opening, impossibly fast for an animal of its size, and tore apart the guards, seemingly oblivious to the numerous bullets that should've rendered it dead. 

Fury chose then to pause the video. 

“It Takes them 30 minutes to force it back into a partial shift and get it back into a cell.” 

\--------------------------  
Tony’s POV

Tony would admit that he hadn’t expected such a visceral reaction to being in the same room as the Director. The woman’s presence alone set off every second of conditioning that had previously been stuffed into a corner in the back of Tony’s mind, bringing to the forefront a torrent of instincts and urges that he had kept suppressed until now. 

He made it all of five minutes in the room with her before he snapped. By the time the woman got the fourth Trigger word Tony had shifted already, and was going for the kill. 

After that, he was in the hallway, tearing through the guards- his paws and jaws were dripping with red but he couldn’t care less- he needed to escape, he needed to get out- he couldn’t follow orders, couldn’t go back to being a puppet. 

Tony was utterly ruthless up until they managed to put him to sleep with tranquilizers. He didn’t know how long he had been fighting, but he didn’t care. His last coherent thought before he passed out was that he was going to do anything and everything he could to make their lives absolute nightmares until he either escaped again or was permanently put down. 

\---------------------  
Steve’s POV

Steve was utterly floored. In the worst possible way. Walking into the debrief room, he had expected something global, aliens, some new terrorist group threatening the government, whoever could abduct Tony Stark right out of his own home ahd to be powerful. Somehow, he still hadn’t expected Hydra. 

He was less surprised that they had taken someone’s Anima to create a monster, though. Which said . SHIELD didn’t know much about it, only that Hydra had used it quite a few times to stir up panic. Steve read through the file quickly, but could barely even think when he finished. 

According to the neatly printed words in front of him, Hydra send the Anima into a crowd as a human, then have it shift and start attacking people. There had been 18 of these attacks over the span of eleven years, spread out in between attacks on SHIELD bases. 

The Anima had managed to avoid capture almost every time, and had single handedly taken out an entire SHIELD base the one time it was captured. Granted, it was a small base, but it was smart enough to know to blow the base up instead of trying to fight its way out head on, which was disconcerting at best. 

At the bottom of the page was a kill count that made Steve choke and do a double, then triple take. Somehow, even the black block lettering made the numbers at the bottom of the page seem extreme. It seemed impossible- no, it was impossible. 

Civilian casualties: 250  
Agent Casualties: 479  
Estimated assassinations: 16  
Total casualties: 745 

\----------------------------

Tony’s POV

Almost a week in, Tony still had yet to shift back into a human. He was constantly either stuck in a partial shift, which, while it scared his captors, it took a toll on Tony too. His thoughts had passed ‘clear’ about a day prior, now his head was simply empty. It was a terrifying thing, to be used to constantly have a million thoughts running through your head, making sleep, taking a break, or even thinking coherently impossible, then having everything just stop. 

Tony had spent the past 24 years terrified of shifting, of reverting back into the Anima and going back to following orders regardless, so realizing that he could’ve have the peace of mind he currently had that whole time because his anima had hated following orders just as much as him was hilarious. Infuriating, spite-inducing, and downright stupid, but hilarious nonetheless. 

Tony used the sudden clarity of thought to formulate a plan. 

Unlike most people, When Tony was in his animal form, it was all fight or flight, instinct and urge. Tony both hated how his thought process would flip like a switch, and loved it, because all the worries of the real world disappeared when he was in his animal form- it was simply the moment, and that was all that mattered. 

This, like all other things, came with drawbacks. His animal instincts filtered through much more than other people’s. Sure, he acted human- nobody had caught on that a lot of his quirks and oddities were actually his animal side, but quite a few of his decisions were actually based off instinctual needs. 

For example, the world thought that his flying the nuclear warhead through the portal was to save New York. In all actuality, that had simply been his away to protect his pack and territory. He had no idea why the Avengers had registered as pack right off the bat, but they had. So, when he was told that there was a nuclear warhead headed straight towards them, there had been no question of what he would do about it- one way trip or not. 

Saving the rest of New York was just an added bonus. 

Another example was him opening his home up to them. He offered them food, clothes, and housing for free just to keep them near so that he could protect them better, keep them closer, provide for them even though they didn’t really need it. Sure, he played it off as him annoying Fury, but behind closed doors he upped the tower’s security tenfold on their floors and done everything he possibly could to make them stay; because they were his pack. 

And that didn’t even mention the multiple-month long legal battle that was getting Bucky cleared to fight and live with them. Tony doubted that the WSC would question his abilities in the courtroom again. 

He did all of this despite not knowing why they were pack- what with how little the team initially got along when Tony was around- but Tony physically couldn’t bring himself to make them- or let them- leave. Couldn’t make himself force away the first people aside from Rhodey and Pepper that registered as family. The first people that registered as safe, as trustworthy, as home. 

...Even if he was never around to truly enjoy the undeniable feeling of rightness that came with being with his pack in his Anima form. 

But now, stuck in a Hydra base in the middle of only God knows where, Tony was beginning to regret the distance he’d kept between himself and his family. Because they had no way to find him, he had no way to contact them, and Tony was at the end of his rope. He wasn’t about to sit around and wait for Hydra to put him under again- he wasn’t about to let them control him again. 

Help or no, Tony refused to sit around and wait for Hydra to come up with an alternative way to control him. He had done enough sitting and letting people make decisions for him already in the past- and he was done. If there was one thing Tony was good at, it was making people regret trying to force him to do things. 

Because he is Tony Stark, and he doesn’t take orders.

\----------------------------  
Nobody’s POV

The Quinjet ride to the coordinates Fury had given them was tense and riddled with random, unanswerable questions. The most prominent being “Why weren’t we told about this sooner?” and “Why didn’t SHIELD do anything about this sooner?” 

Bucky was the only one who actually said anything. “We need more information before we storm the castle. I know Hydra- this isn’t their style, they clean up their lose ends. The only reason this thing would still be alive is if they couldn’t kill it. We can’t just go in and expect to be able to take the entire base- plus some insane monster- with Tony still missing in there somewhere!” he snapped

Steve sighed. “I know. But we don’t have any more information on Tony, and is this thing was there, then it might give us a lead. I don’t like it either, but it’s not like we have a choice.” 

Bucky seemed placated for the moment, but his words voiced what everyone else had been thinking. Hydra was usually better than this. 

The plan was to send in Natasha first so she could sneak in, disable the locks on the doors and locate the Anima- taking it out was SHIELD’s top priority. The rest of the team would come in after the doors were unlocked, and take out the rest of the base as a unit. 

They weren’t expecting the doors to already be busted, left wide open and gaping. Stepping out of the Quinjet, the team was met with eerie silence, punctuated by strong winds blowing snow through the area, almost covering up the bloody tracks leading away from the base.

Steve jumped straight into leader mode upon seeing it. “Alright, new plan. Let’s split up. Bucky can follow the tracks, you are the most likely to be able to keep it occupied, Black Widow, Hawkeye and I can check the base for-” Steve glanced at the building in front of them and the red tracks mauling the white snow. “Survivors. Dr.Banner can stay in the Quinjet in case someone needs backup. Good luck.”

\----------------------------

Tony’s POV

Snow crunched beneath Tony’s raw, bloodied paws as he practically flew through the woods, leaping through the snow with all the grace of a wounded, half dead deer, breathing harsh through fractured ribs and looking back whenever he could, trying to gauge the distance between him and his assailant. 

He could hear him getting closer- Tony would have to take a stand eventually, he knew, he couldn’t run forever while bleeding out, exhausted, and unable to see straight through the pain- but Tony refused to fight him. He’d take fighting another legion of Hydra agents any day, Tony Blatantly refused to fight Bucky. Not after they’d finally made their peace and become friends and Bucky didn’t even know who it was he was fighting. 

But Tony couldn't shift back now- if he did, he’d die for certain. His already accelerated healing was even faster in his animal form, and if he shifted back, Hydra-formulated serum or not, his human body simply wouldn’t be able to handle the sheer quantity of wounds he’d managed to gather himself tearing down an entire hydra base. 

Barely over two days hours after he got out, Tony was about half-healed, still all but dead to the world, when Bucky and showed up on a kill mission. The rest of the team was checking out out the empty base no doubt- and as much as the thought alone of them in that horror house made him want to turn around and drag them kicking and screaming out of the doubtlessly blood-coated halls, Tony was more preoccupied with the eight foot tall monster of a Timber wolf hunting him. 

Tony was running out of time, breath, and places to go. He’d have flown away by now like his instincts were screaming at him to, but he’d managed to break one of his wings during his ‘great escape’, and it was definitely still fractured at the very least. So safe within his back his wings remained, despite the horrible itching of his wing-slits and the desperate need to fly. To choose flight over fight. 

Bucky was closer now. The thought alone made Tony stumble- his attention solely focussed on the wolf for a split second and making him miss the absurdly deep snowdrift in front of him. He went in headfirst, flopping over on his side instinctively to keep from adding a broken neck to his list of injuries. He landed painfully on his tail anyway, making an awkward startled-pained yelping noise as he disappeared into the frigid coffin of white. 

It would've been hilarious in any other situation.

It would've been hilarious if he hadn’t felt claws dig into his leg a split-second before he got back up. 

It would've been hilarious had Tony not been roaring in agony before he could stop himself- Bucky jerked back as thought he’d been burned. 

Tony was trembling violently, unable to move anymore. Pain wracked Tony’s form like nothing he’d ever felt before, leaving him completely paralyzed aside from the vicious, violent shudders tearing through him. He could feel everything all of a sudden; the constant thrumming burn of overworked muscles, the sharp sting of reopened wounds, the horrible stabbing sensation of half-healed fractures that had snapped again, even the too warm- burning- wetness of blood seeping from his battered body.

He barely heard Bucky’s strangled gasp- didn’t catch most of the words coming from and being snarled into the coms; he couldn’t think past the weakening pulse in his veins, the slowing of his heart, the creeping fuzziness taking over his head, blurring his few thoughts well beyond oblivion. Tony would have chuckled, if he had the energy.

Because Wasn’t it simply fitting that he die by the hand of a dear friend in the middle of the mountains, leaving his family no way to know that it was he that they killed until he’d shifted back dead? Tony thought for a moment that he actually did laugh- well, more of a pained wheeze-cough that made it through the whimpers he couldn’t stop, despite the punctured lung currently filling with blood, but he thought Bucky got the point, given the stricken expression on the man’s face. 

The trouble with that, Tony realized belatedly, was that it meant the assassin had shifted back to human at some point- and Tony would have remembered that. He also should've remembered when the man’s expression shifted away from absolutely murderous to altogether horrified. Instinctively, Tony whined at him, trying to offer some form of comfort. It only seemed to make it worse, though, making Tony attempt to get back to his feet but finding himself unable. 

All of a sudden, Tony couldn’t figure it out. Why was Bucky in so much distress? How could Tony have let that happen? Was he in pain? Had tony hurt him? Tony could smell the way Bucky was panicking, see it on his face and the way he spoke rushedly into the comms. It made Tony want to curl up around him and protect him. 

The man’s mouth was moving, but there was a static in Tony’s head where words should've been, and closing his eyes to rest seemed just so much easier than fighting all of a sudden. The cold had snuck back into Tony’s bones at some point, numbing the pain and making him sigh a choked sigh of relief as darkness bagan to swallow his mind. He could feel his breathing slowing, and voices getting closer, but he found that he didn’t mind. 

He was too tired to fight anymore.  
\----------------------------  
Bucky’s POV

Bucky had known that they didn’t have all the information. He had known that something was wrong about the whole situation back in the quinjet, he’ known the second he’s gotten a good look at The Anima. It had looked almost dead at best, and Bucky was astonished when it jerked up anyway immediately after seeing him and started running- even though it was limping horribly. 

Admittedly, the only reason the chase lasted as long as it did was because Bucky had been very distracted trying to figure out where he’d seen it’s eyes before. Well, that, and it was solid white aside from the alarming amount of blood matted in it’s fur. But he’d chased it down anyway, knowing that if they were right, it’d do more damage than good to let it live.

So the second it mistepped and went tumbling into a snowdrift, Bucky had at it’s hind leg so it couldn’t get away. Except it screamed like a human, and it’s eyes were mirror images of- Bucky recoiled. “Oh no. oh please no.” 

He was talking into the comms before he even realized it. “Guys- get back to the quinjet and to me. I need emergency medical- he’s in real bad shape. Punctured lung, internal and external bleeding,bullet wounds everywhere, probably a few broken bones- have Bruce ready, and somebody warn Fury that we’re not coming back alone.” 

\--------------------------  
Bruce’s POV

Seeing the anima up close for the first time was nothing short of shocking. Bucky had said that it was in a bad shape- but this was so far beyond ‘bad shape’ that it would be a miracle if it came out alive. Except, something about its shape seemed familiar. What looked like what could've been an albino king cheetah base, but much, much bigger than any Bruce had seen before, and with antlers, massive paws housing razor-like claws, a longer than normal tail, larger than normal ears… long slits down it’s back that seemed to house… wings? Bruce’s thoughts flashed back to a stray sheet of copy paper covered in impossible DNA and he paused. 

Then something clicked. Delicately inspecting one of the creature’s eyes, he recognized the tired, almost lifeless honey brown gazed back at him. A semi-relieved, semi-horrified huff escaped him. He wasn’t sure who said it, him or Bucky, but he heard a “Nat, change of plan, we’re going back to the tower. Fury can wait.”

\-----------------------  
Tony’s POV  
The next time tony woke up, he was being guided into the Avengers’ Tower, surrounded by his team. He could hear JARVIS talking quietly as he faded in and out of conscious, quiet murmuring between the people around him. There were hands in his fur- careful to avoid his wounds- leading him somewhere his clouded mind couldn’t put together. 

They coaxed him into his bedroom, and Tony was momentarily distracted by an odd rumbling sound coming from his chest, but immediately, Tony’s thoughts were dominated by the need to lay down in his nest. He did just that, the rumbling in his chest growing impossibly loud once he was of his feet. He thought he could hear snickers from somewhere, but was more preoccupied with the darkness taking over again. 

He almost wanted to let it. Tony wanted to go to sleep, and not wake up for at least a month. He gave up fighting after someone’s voice- almost like Bucky’s- told him to go to sleep because he was safe now. 

Tony wanted to argue. Was pretty sure he did, and he heard a weak chirp come from his throat, telling the Bucky-not-Bucky voice that no, no he couldn’t go to sleep because if he did, he’d have to wake up and find that this was all a hallucination, and he was still with Hydra. He was promised that it wasn’t a dream by the collective voices of his team, and couldn’t manage to open his eyes to check, giving up the fight against sleep and drifting off to the smell of his pack around him and the familiar feel of his nest beneath him.


End file.
